Thinking critically about the Internet: suggestions for practitioners

Parents have a long history of seeking child-rearing information in the popular media. This trend continues on the World Wide Web, with the number of parents online still on the rise. The Web offers speed, 24-hour access, and extremely large quantities of child rearing information. Although the availability of huge quantities of childrearing information has many positive aspects, there is a serious risk of exposure to erroneous and potentially harmful information due to the absence of monitoring of online material. This article summarizes the literature on parents' Web use and describes several steps that, if taken, will help to lessen the chance of parents' exposure to risky online material. The steps include: making parents aware of the risks, providing them with sets of screened sites that they can trust, and teaching them a few simple Web skills to improve their searching and their assessment of sites' trustworthiness.     

Out of touch: local government and disabled people's employment needs

In autumn 2003 we contracted to undertake a study in two district council areas of ways in which they could meet their Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA) targets in respect of disabled people returning to work. We undertook a literature review of barriers to work, interviewed a number of people involved in working with unemployed people and a number of disabled people in these areas. All the employment organisations we had contact with were working to an individual model of disability and the need to change their orientation became the central recommendation of the first phase of this study. This was rejected by those funding the study. At the end of the first year none of the organisations active in this area was able to identify a single disabled person who had returned to work as a result of their help. We conclude that central government policies are doing little to change the perception of the employment needs of disabled people within local government.     

Probabilistic-Based Structural Specifications

The construction industry is both the largest civilian industry and the most unique in terms of fragmentation and its approach to controlling risk. Structural specifications establish nominal safety factors and design criteria for engineered structures such as buildings, bridges, dams, and power facilities. The goal is satisfactory strength capacity to safely and economically meet the demands of structural performance. Structures must resist the highly uncertain effects of combined gravity, earthquakes, wind, and snow loads supported by natural and human-made materials. The public's expectation is that structures should last a long time and have low lifetime risk of structural failure. Historically, specifications have contained safety factors which evolved from past experiences and provided adequate safety or low risk. Due to pressures of economy and the need to optimize structural performance, structural specifications have recently been developed and accepted by industry based on structural reliability and risk-assessment principles. This paper reviews developments of probabilistic applications in structural specifications including specification format, database, implementation examples, target risk levels, present research activities, and future goals for establishing optimal risk-design procedures.     

美国文化人类学的当代理论趋势

本文试图总结美国文化人类学的当代理论和方法论.这里所讨论的这些美国人类学的当代观念是基于它们的历史脉络、继承、重现、转变和对立.从20世纪60年代起,在诸如主观性、权力和民族志表述等问题上,人类学理论和方法论发生了许多非常显著的转变和分歧.这种状况起因于人类文化学研究的文学化途径,这种途径是经由格尔茨(Geertz)以及其他学术运动,如英国的文化研究(Cultural Studies),特别是福柯(Foucault)的后现代主义而发展起来的.由此,人类学由来已久的喧嚣的科学和人文之间的对峙已经演绎出独立的认识论阵营,在某些情况下导致了一些大学中人类学系的分离.同时,这种分裂也激发或伴随着一种对当代全球化形势下文化人类学研究对象的定位的承认,比如本土性(indigenous)、下层 (subalterns)研究,确认了这些研究对象在研究项目中具有合法的权利和合作的声音.这种转向使人们愈加关注应用人类学,同时也伴随着许多新的问题,例如"本土知识"的观念.另一个分裂是一些特定的专门研究领域的学科建制,如医学人类学、生态人类学和教育人类学等,而这些领域的每一个又都存在着其内部分歧和区别.这些正在发生的变化引起了对于博厄斯学派所传承下来的诸如文化、文化相对主义等观念的效用和学术规范的质疑.过去的30年是一个骚动激荡、分崩离析的时期,人类学研究在这个时期卷入了全球资本主义的新的文化逻辑的转换之中.     

FACTORS RELATED TO FAMILY THERAPISTS' BREAKING CONFIDENCE WHEN CLIENTS DISCLOSE HIGH-RISKS-TO-HIV/AIDS SEXUAL BEHAVIORS

This national survey of 309 marriage and family therapists examined what therapists do when their HIV-positive clients disclose that they are engaging in high-risk sexual behavior. The participants were given vignettes in which a fictitious client told the therapist about engaging in unprotected sex. Although the basic situations were the same, the client variables of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, and HIV status were systematically varied. The participants were more likely to break confidence regarding unsafe sex practices when their clients were male, young, gay, or African American. Moreover, therapists who were more likely to disclose were older, female, had less experience with gay/lesbian populations, were Catholic, were very religious, and were more likely to practice in urban areas. The authors discuss the implications of these and other findings.     

Gender and diversity topics taught in Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education programs

This article explores how the topics of gender and diversity are being taught and defined in accredited marriage and family therapy programs through syllabi content analysis and interviews with selected faculty. We examined findings by program (master's and doctoral) and type of training (those that taught specific gender and culture courses and those that attempted to infuse gender and culture throughout the curriculum). We examined 39 syllabi from 21 master's and 18 doctoral training programs. In addition, we conducted 20 interviews with faculty members. (Eighteen were White/Caucasian, one was African American and one was Asian Indian.) Some variation in topic areas was found between master's and doctoral programs and between those programs that offered specific course content and those that offered infused course content. However, qualitative interview data reflected many similarities. Particularly apparent was the level of commitment, transparency, and experiential learning methods professors used, regardless of program level or type.     

A Model of the Antecedents of Perceived Ease of Use: Development and Test*

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been widely used to predict user acceptance and use based on perceived ease of use and usefulness. However, in order to design effective training interventions to improve user acceptance, it is necessary to better understand the antecedents and determinants of key acceptance constructs. In this research, we focus on understanding the determinants of perceived ease of use. Data from three experiments spanning 108 subjects and six different systems supported our hypothesis that an individual's perception of a particular system's ease of use is anchored to her or his general computer self-efficacy at all times, and objective usability has an impact on ease of use perceptions about a specific system only after direct experience with the system. In addition to being an important research issue in user acceptance research, understanding antecedents of perceived ease of use is also important from a practical standpoint since several systems in which millions of dollars are invested are rejected because of poor user interfaces. Moreover, the actual underlying problem might be low computer self-efficacy of the target user group. In such cases, training interventions aimed at improving computer self-efficacy of users may be more effective than improved interface design for increasing user acceptance.